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ST. LOUIS — A federal judge in Missouri granted a stay of execution yesterday to white
supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin just hours before his scheduled death, citing
concerns about the state’s new execution method.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled that a lawsuit filed by Franklin and 20 other Death
Row inmates challenging Missouri’s execution protocol must be resolved before he is put to
death.

The state appealed Laughrey’s ruling to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis last
night, though it was unclear how quickly that court would rule.

A second lower-court federal judge, weighing a separate defense appeal contesting Franklin’s
competency to be executed based on his mental illness, also granted a stay and said the issue needs
“a meaningful review.”

Laughrey’s 14-page ruling criticizes the timing of the state’s changes to how it carries out
capital punishment, specifically its plan to use for the first time a single drug, pentobarbital.
It also takes issue with a plan to acquire the drug from a compounding pharmacy.

Laughrey wrote that the Missouri Department of Corrections “has not provided any information
about the certification, inspection history, infraction history, or other aspects of the
compounding pharmacy or of the person compounding the drug.”

Messages left with the state attorney general’s office were not returned.

If a federal appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Laughrey’s ruling, the
execution could go forward.

Franklin’s attorney, Jennifer Herndon, said the execution warrant allows it to be carried out
anytime today.

Franklin, 63, was convicted of seven other murders, but the Missouri case was the only one
resulting in a death sentence.

Franklin also has admitted to shooting and wounding civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan and
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who has been paralyzed from the waist down since
the attack in 1978.